Near‐fatal Intoxication with the “New” Synthetic Opioid U‐47700: The First Reported Case in the Czech Republic

Recreational use of the potent synthetic opioid 3,4‐ dichloro‐N‐(2‐(dimethylamino)cyclohexyl)‐N‐methylbenzamide (U‐47700) is rising, accompanied by increasingly frequent cases of serious intoxication. This article reports a case of near‐fatal U‐47700 intoxication. A man was found unconscious (with drug powder residues). After 40 h in hospital (including 12 h of supported ventilation), he recovered and was discharged. Liquid chromatography/high‐resolution mass spectrometry (LC/HRMS) or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) were used to detect and quantify substances in powders, serum and urine. Powders contained U‐47700 and two synthetic cannabinoids. Serum and urine were positive for U‐47700 (351.0 ng/mL), citalopram (<LOQ), tetrahydrocannabinol (THC: 3.3 ng/mL), midazolam (<LOQ) and a novel benzodiazepine, clonazolam (6.8 ng/mL) and their metabolites but negative for synthetic cannabinoids. If potent synthetic opioids become cheaper and more easily obtainable than their classical counterparts (e.g., heroin), they will inevitably replace them and users may be exposed to elevated risks of addiction and overdose.     

Postmortem Analysis of Electrogram Records from an Implantable Cardioverter‐Defibrillator (ICD) in the Reconstruction of a Road Traffic Accident

The case of a 69‐year‐old man, equipped with an ICD and suffering from several chronic cardiac diseases, who died in a car accident, was presented. We analyzed electrogram records from the ICD explanted from the body during the autopsy, which showed that the driver had suffered from malignant ventricular arrhythmia—ventricular fibrillation (VF). A thorough analysis of the details of the accident, as well as the timing of VF and the rhythm observed after the discharge of the ICD showed that the direct cause of the accident was the episode of arrhythmia resulting in a loss of consciousness. Therefore, the presented case illustrates the usefulness of postmortem analysis of electrogram records from ICDs in the reconstruction of road traffic accidents. In such cases, if the victims are implanted with ICDs, it should be a routine procedure performed by forensic pathologists.     

Medellín: Body and Territory

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - Medellín has been a privileged subject in Colombian cinema. In films whose stories take...     

Severity of neurocognitive impairment in women who have experienced intimate partner violence in Spain

This study examines neuropsychological impairment in women who have experienced intimate partner violence using DSM 5 criteria for mild and severe cognitive impairment. A total of 108 females in Spain were included in one of three groups: psychological abuse (n = 24), physical and psychological abuse (n = 45), and no-abuse (n = 39). There were differences between the control and IPV groups in attention and executive functioning. Furthermore, approximately 25% of women experiencing IPV suffer mild neuropsychological alterations and 5% severe, mostly in memory and executive function domains. This evidence supports the growth in research that suggests psychological violence on its own to be as strongly related to poor health outcomes as physical violence in intimate partner relationships.     

Can analysis of a small clod of soil help to solve a murder case?

Soil forensics utilizes extensive soil information to answer legal questions and test hypotheses. The main difficulty often is the determination of different variables from a small amount of soil sample collected on the suspect. We developed a sequential mineralogical and chemical analyses to assess a limited quantity of soil vestiges (0.5 g) from a suspect's vehicle (adhered to the outside rear-view mirror and to the left front fender) involved in a murder case and compared them with the surface samples found at the victim's body disposal site at the Graciosa Road, Paraná State, Brazil. All results affirm that the suspect’s vehicle could have been in contact with the edge of the Graciosa Road, approximately the place where the victim’s body was located. As a result of the soil analysis and comparison, the results support the likely contact of the suspect’s vehicle with the crime scene.     

Market freedoms and private interactions under EU law

China-EU Law Journal - The Court of Justice of the European Union has ascertained that free movement provisions as enshrined in European Union primary law entail not only mandatory rules...     

Legal Aid,Social Workers,and the Redefinition of the Legal Profession in Chile, 1925–1960

This article examines the history of the Chilean Legal Aid Service (Servicio de Asistencia Judicial) from the 1920s until the 1960s. It argues that with the emergence of the “social question”—the concern for improving the lower classes' working and living conditions to promote the nation's modernization and prevent political radicalization—the Chilean legal profession committed to legal aid reform to escape a professional identity crisis. Legal aid allowed lawyers to claim they had a new “social function” advocating on behalf of the poor. However, within legal aid offices, lawyers interacted with female social workers who acted as gatekeepers, mediators, and translators between the lawyers and the poor. This gendered professional complementarity in legal aid offices helped lawyers to put limits on their new “social function”: it allowed them to maintain legal aid as a part‐time activity that did not challenge the structure of the legal system as a whole.     

Party Strategies,Constituency Links,and Legislative Speech

This article examines how parties organize legislative speech. Electoral incentives and legislative institutions affect speech participation. When electoral systems create personal vote‐seeking incentives, parties are less concerned with screening speeches and more supportive of members seeking to garner name recognition. But in many countries, legislative rules and norms constrain opportunities for individual position taking during the lawmaking debates. We argue that parties resolve this dilemma by organizing speech participation into nonlegislative speeches and lawmaking debates. In each instance, different types of legislators are more likely to speak. We examine the case of Chile and test the implications of our theory with data on congressional speeches.     

Differences in contract design between successful and less successful franchises

The aim of this paper is to identify differences in contract design between successful and less successful franchise chains. Comparing contracts from both groups of companies, we observe, on the one hand, that (1) franchise contracts are unbalanced irrespective of the chain’s success: contracts cover franchisees’ obligations more than franchisors’ obligations. On the other hand, we find that (2) contracts in successful franchise chains are more complete (i.e. cover a larger number of contingencies) than the less successful ones and (3) this difference lies in the contingencies regarding franchisees’ obligations, which are more fully covered in the contracts of more successful chains. More specifically, within the contingencies regarding franchisees’ obligations, (4) successful chains restrict the franchisee decision rights more frequently on day-to-day business operations than on financial conditions or post-contractual contingencies. These findings can be explained because successful chains are more sensitive to franchisees’ opportunistic behavior, because they have learned how to manage and solve any potential conflicts, or because of differences in bargaining power. Finally (5) franchisors’ obligations are not statistically different between groups, which we interpret as evidence that relational contracting mechanisms do not substitute formalization.